The E4E Neo-Liberal Invasion At IS 162 Bronx

It didn't hit me until this morning. I was thinking about last night's blog posting. I was quite proud of the crack team at SBSB in how they came through with the information. But no one, not them, not me, picked up on it.

Not only, and this is not what I had noticed, that the combined total of years, discounting Val Lorie Wilson (and there is a reason), is a grand total of 2.5 years teaching for these teachers. But that is not what I noticed.

Again, except for Val Lorie Wilson, not one person on the "team? that put together E4E's manifesto is a person of color. I consulted with the crack team and found it quite peculiar. This is curious as do to the fact there is quite a diversity of teachers here in NYC. However, we do applaud E4E to have a token no Ivy League, non-TFA person, non-Elite on its manifesto team.

But let's look again behind the curtain. We spoke with our sources at IS 162 in the Bronx where Val Lorie Wilson teaches, as well as compatriot manifesto writer, Evan Piekara teach. While Ms Wilson is described as a dedicated teacher, a great teacher, and a truly caring teacher, she has been labeled as a bit of a flake, and a follower.

For some time Ms Wilson had taught in a CTT class. Suddenly this year she decided that she wanted to teacher a special ed. 12:1 class. No, and we haven't received word yet, we do not know if Ms Wilson exercised her official rights of seniority on the year end preference sheets.

Ms Wilson was just quoted on the official E4E website this past Monday, February 14 as saying;

"The last thing I want to see is teachers losing their jobs, but worse than that is the idea that some of our best teachers will be let go if this policy isn't changed," said Val Lorie Wilson, a middle school teacher with 10 years of experience in the classroom who likely would not be at risk for layoff under the current policy. "There was a time when seniority rules were the only available method for doing layoffs, but now we have better ways to make these decisions so that we keep great teachers of all experience levels in the classroom."

This is brought up because one needs to know now if Ms Wilson received her assignment based on her seniority rights in her school. If this is so, it shows that Ms Wilson is not only easily manipulated into joining a club, but that she is a hypocrite as well.

Which brings us to Evan Piekara (Evan is a common name at E4E?). Again, heard great things about Evan. Wishes to save the Bronx. A nice liberal, I am the great white savior mindset. But Evan has other aspirations other than being a teacher. Teaching for Evan is just a blip in a career of being a Fullbright Scholar, of owning his own business, and of course being the the great white savior that knows what is best for little boys and girls of color.

While yes he teaches some of the top ELA classes at IS 162, we wonder how effective he would be if he had all lower rung classes. We do know that in the last year of testing, the 6th grade at IS 162 only 17.8% passed the state ELA exam and of the 7th graders, on 18.8% passed. So one must wonder how much Evan Piekara is part of the problem. But if the crack team's research is incorrect we challenge Evan Piekara to refute this information. One thing of note, we found it humorous that Evan lists himself as a co-founder of TFA on his Linkedin page. As well as his school's operations manager. Whatever that is.

But not to fret. Evan was the Sue Lehmann Excellence in Teaching New York City Finalist 2009. We applaud him. Just we would like to know if he nominated himself.